16.1.16

I
don't remember much of my mum. I don't have many memories of her
while I was growing up. The only image I have of her is her current
one. I know how she looks now, I know how she behaves now and how she
loves her dog, Delilah, but I can't remember how she used to look
like or act like ten years ago. Sometimes I try to think how she was
before she got her job but I can't remember that either. The
strongest memories I have of my mother is when it was Christmas and
she was heavily pregnant with my brother. I remember her being in the
kitchen wrapping mine and my sister's presents, with her huge belly
being on the way. She told me to close my eyes when the turn of my
gifts came and she told me not to look where she was hiding the
presents. Of course I looked and I ran to my sister, gave away the
hiding place and we went and peeped, tearing only slightly the
wrapping paper. I don't remember what I got that year but I know that
I was jealous of my sister's huge doll with long, elastic arms and
legs, which you could wear and walk around with it.

The
next memory is New Year's Day 2000. We used to have guests every New
Year's day and it was right after our guests had left. We were in my
brother's room and we were fighting. I don't remember why, but I
remember I was yelling at her that she has no idea who I am. Pretty
dramatic for an eight-year-old I have to admit. That night I
witnessed my mum's first panic attack. Years later, she confessed to
me that for at least six months after that day she was battling with

clinical
depression, but I was too young to remember her being ill. I vaguely
remember how scared I was every time she was having panic attacks,
and how I was trying to be good because mum had 'sensitive nerves'.

Thinking
back to it now, and after she had a relapse when I was much older I
can't help but feel culpable. It comes from the fact that every time
my mum had a panic attack it was because I said or did something. And
the funny thing is that she has told me that her very first nervous
breakdown was when she was pregnant to me. Coincidental? I don't
think so. And when I was seventeen and she was taking all those
antidepressants I felt so angry at her. I was a teenager, I had every
right to be an idiot, aggressive, melodramatic and everything a
teenager should be. But I couldn't because if I behaved like a
teenager my mum would get sad and maybe kill herself. I felt she was
selfish taking that away from me, not realising that the selfish one
was me.

We
talked about it a couple of years ago and she said that she got
scared when she realised that she was so ill that she wasn't capable
of caring about us. She said that she only wanted to sleep and she
didn't want to deal with our lunch or our homework, if we brushed our
teeth or anything. She just wanted to be left alone. Even today it
scares me to think that my mum had all these thoughts, not so much
about her not wanting to deal with us, more about the moment she
realised she doesn't care about her children and how awful and guilty
she must have felt.

My
mum is alright now. She still takes her medication, she says that it
doesn't hurt taking them as a precaution. I know she is probably
addicted, but it's fine because she is better now, she has her job,
she finally has friends and she loves doing her nails with awful
kitsch colours that I hate, but I'll never admit that to her. She looks happier now.

//

I
am not sure yet if I want to sing you or write you.

I
lie at the backseats of your car with my eyes shut, half-conscious
half-awake, while my mind is trying to guess how much of the road
home we have done already. And then I open my eyes and I am
disappointed that we only did this much. And for a fraction of a
second I do not recognise this building and I believe that you are
taking me somewhere else, somewhere where magic exists. You pull
under your flat and I cry because the disappointment of not going
somewhere else, broke my heart. You ask what is wrong now, and I say
I don't know, I don't know why this keeps happening. You believe me
but you keep pretending that you don't believe me. You are afraid.
You don't trust me these days, you worry that I lie even when I'm
saying the truth. Even though I do lie now.

What
will happen now, when will we be free? I hate everything. I hate him
and her, and the other one, and I hate mambo and sex. Your drugs are
boring, and your dance moves are always the same and I hate you. I
hate planes, English, ashtrays, plastic bags, I hate lies, but
especially the truth. I hate New Years Eve and electric fireplaces
and the fact that every tattoo should have an important meaning and I
hate the book binding that is based more on glue rather than thread.
Your high-school annoys me and your friends are stupid. Your fears
are childish and your car is fat.

11.1.16

There
is a tiny dancer that is living with her tiny grandmother in her
house. The tiny dancer likes to play all sorts of games while her
tiny grandmother is cooking dinner. Her favourite game is playing the
Witch. The Witch is always played in the fancy dining room; a musty
unworldly room, with heavy furnitures, where the curtains are always
shut, because 'the sun eats the furniture away' as the tiny
grandmother always says. The spooky dining room is perfect for the
Witch because of the old pictures of the scary people on the dark
tapestry. Although the tiny dancer loves to play in that room, she
avoids looking at the frames because she knows that all these people
are dead now. Dead people can move when they live in frames, she
knows it, she's read it in a book. And as much as she loves hearing
stories about them from her tiny grandmother, she doesn't want to
hear the stories from them. One afternoon she is playing the Witch
with the Taro cards she's made on her own and somehow her arm is
stuck in the frame of the chair. The tiny dancer is now panicking
because she is convinced that the dead people in the frames are going
to get her. But she doesn't cry because she knows that this is what
they want. So, she sits there, stoically, trying to keep herself
calm. She sits there with her arm trapped, and silent tears are
falling down her tiny face. After a while – or a couple of days,
time is hard to track in the spooky dining room - her tiny
grandmother comes in and sees that she is trapped. Her tiny
grandmother thinks that it's a good idea to tell her a story about
the dead people instead of releasing her arm.

'Back
in my village there used to be two children that were so young they
couldn't talk yet. One day, they were playing in the backyard when
one of them put his hand in a hole of the stone paddock. His hand was
stuck in the hole and when he started to cry the grown-ups were
gathered around him
trying to release him. They were trying for at least two hours –
maybe it was a couple of days, time was hard to track in the backyard
– everything they could think of, but nothing seemed to be working.
Finally, his friend approached him and asked him in a language that
no one understood: ''Packa-Packa or Poocka-Poocka?'' and he
immediately answered ''Packa-Packa'', while removing his hand on his
own, with no effort at all. When he was asked what those words meant
years later, he simply answered that his friend asked him if his arm
was straight or if it formed a fist, when he first put it in the
hole. Because, they only way to get something out, is to pull it out
with the same shape it had when you got it in. If his hand was
straight when he put it in the hole, there was no way he could get it
out while he had a fist, because there was not enough space to fit a
fist out.'

After
telling her that story, tiny grandmother asks her tiny dancer
'Packa-Packa or Poocka-Poocka?'. Tiny dancer answers 'Poocka-Poocka'
while she is easily releasing her arm on her own.

The
months are passing by, and the tiny grandmother is teaching her tiny
dancer about life. She is telling her stories about the Amazons, and
Judith and her cousin, Yolanda. Tiny grandmother says that Yolanda is
so strong and beautiful that when she walks the pavement breaks from
her power of her presence and men around her faint from her beauty.
Tiny grandmother insists that tiny dancer should be like Yolanda:
beautiful and powerful, untouchable and fearless. Tiny dancer has
tried in multiple occasions since then, to break the pavement but she
hasn't succeeded. She runs and stomps and jumps but the pavement is
not bowing in front of her power and men definitely don't faint from
tiny dancer's beauty, just yet.

Tiny
dancer is to trust no man. Tiny grandmothers teaches her well and
reminds her that her dignity is what will make her great, and her
brains is what will make her powerful. Now tiny grandmother has to
leave and visit her old village for a couple of weeks and tiny dancer
cries at the train station

while
her mother is consoling her. What will tiny dancer do for two weeks
on her own?

When I was a tiny dancer, I used to lie that I hate pink because I
didn't want people to think that I am weak and girly. Now that I am a
grown up I tend to buy pink shampoo because I have a need to feel
more like a girl. I get pink razors, my tongue is pink, my
underwear is pink and when I scratch my skin too hard, it also
becomes pink.